I would first like to thank HALIFAX
MAGAZINE for allowing me to reprint this wonderful article on helping others
to understand what a true Florida Cracker is. This article appears in the
September 1997 issue of Halifax Magazine.

CRACKING UP CRACKER MYTHSBY RICK TONYAN

"What cracker is this same that deafe our
eares with this abundance of superfluous breath?" —- William Shakespeare,
King John, Act II, Scene 1, 1594.

"Death to racist crackers!" —
graffiti on a bathroom wall, University of Florida, 1969.

As those quotations show, the word cracker
is burdened with several centuries’ worth of bad connotations. At least when
the word is applied to people instead of being served with soup.

If Dana Ste. Claire gets his way, a new exhibit
at the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences will help lift those
connotations from the people known as Florida Crackers.

It’s not going to be an easy job, says Ste.
Claire, organizer of the exhibit entitled "Cracker Culture in Florida
History."

"Cracker has been used for whites the way
the N-word is used for African Americans," According to Ste.Claire, curator
of history at the museum, "We’re trying to dispel those myths."

Dispelling myths about what Crackers are would be
easier, if anybody knew for sure what the word really means and how it became
applied to Florida settlers in the first place.

"It seems that the greatest mystery, though,
lies in the origin of the word — more is known about the lifestyles of
Crackers through two and a half centuries than the historical development of the
word cracker, Ste. Claire wrote in one of 11 panels used in the exhibit.

There are three main theories about how the word
developed. But none of the three conclusively show how and why the Cracker
became applied to Floridians.

Theory One: Cracker comes from a Celtic word
meaning braggart or loudmouth. Shakespeare used this sense of the word in King
John. But the theory doesn’t explain why the word in this sense would be
applied to the usually taciturn folk of the Florida backwoods.

Theory Two: The word comes from the practice of
"corncracking" or grinding dried corn for use as grits and meal, as in
the lyrics of the folk song Blue Tailed Fly, "Jimmy crack
corn." When used in this sense, a Cracker is somebody who can’t afford
any other food. But this theory doesn’t answer the question of how the word
got applied almost exclusively to folks in rural areas of south Georgia and
Florida. And, by the 1800s, the name "Cracker" wasn’t used to
describe only impoverished settlers.

Theory three: The name comes from the sound of
whips used to drive cattle and oxen. Florida cattlemen cracked whips to flush
their stock out of the palmetto scrub while settlers used whips to spur on oxen
that pulled their carts and wagons. Cracker has been used in this sense since
the early 1800s. This is the most popular theory today. But it doesn’t explain
why people were being called Crackers for centuries before Florida cattlemen
began working in the scrub lands.

Different areas of the state embrace different
theories. For example, the corncracker theory prevails in the Panhandle and
along the Georgia border. In those areas, Cracker is considered an insult.

Meanwhile, the whip cracker theory is popular in
Central Florida. Cattle raisers in particular are proud to identify themselves
as Crackers.

But a variation of the braggart theory developed
during the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and 60s. Cracker began to be
associated with opinionated, ignorant whites who could easily be incited to
violence. In many urban areas throughout the state, "Cracker " still
means "bigot."

"It’s a very interesting thing," Ste.
Claire says. "I’m very careful about the way I use it. "There are
people who are proud of the term. Then there are people who are very offended by
the term."

Even when the name is being used in a positive
context, some notions about exactly who is Cracker are just plain wrong, says
Ste. Claire, who is writing a book on the subject.

Crackers are not simply native Floridians. For
example, Ste. Claire was born in Ocala and spent all of his 40 years in the
state, but he doesn’t consider himself a Cracker.

Crackers live in rural areas. Historically, they
have been self-sufficient, growing their own vegetables, hunting or raising
their own meat and building their own houses.

But the houses they built during their heyday
weren’t necessarily the large, clapboard homes with the wraparound porches
that now are called "cracker houses."

A real Cracker house most likely would have been
a small log cabin. Often, the houses looked like two cabins, connected by a
roofed-over porch called a dog trot.

Sometimes, the houses were built like a small
dormitory—one hallway with rooms branching off from it. That style was called
a shotgun house, because it would be possible to shoot through the front door
and have the shot pass out the back without hitting the wall of a room.

"It could be said that a good definition of
a Cracker house is any house that a Cracker lived in," Ste. Claire wrote in
one of the exhibit panels.

Not every pioneer in Florida could justifiably be
called a Cracker. Pioneers move into a new territory and develop it. They bring
in churches, schools, railroads and various other trappings of civilization.

Crackers might settle into a new territory, but
they are too self-reliant and independent to need everything that development
brings.

For example, Ohio natives Matthias Day and his
son Loomis certainly qualify as pioneers, but nobody ever calls them Crackers.

In the early 1870s, the Days settled on a
deserted parcel of land on the west bank of the Halifax River. They began
developing a town, attracting other settlers, mostly from northern states. The
town was named Daytona in their honor.

Their northern birth doesn’t necessarily
disqualify the Days from being called Crackers. Wanting to develop a town around
them, where they could buy the amenities of life, does.

Compare the Days to Bone Mizell, who rates an
entire panel to himself in the exhibit. Mizell couldn’t be considered a
pioneer in the sense that he moved into a new territory and settled it.

Bone stayed near his Central Florida birthplace
for all of his 58 years. And he settled nowhere, roaming around the palmetto
scrub and working cattle between Orange and Desoto counties.

But, by the time he drank himself to death in
1921, Bone was a legend among Crackers. He was so self-sufficient that he once
didn’t even need a knife to ear mark a cow. Ear marking is a practice similar
to branding. Cattlemen cut notches in their stock’s ears to identify them.

Bone once lost his knife while trying to earmark
a cow in some heavy scrub. He finished the job by biting the notches into the
ears.

"I’m trying to sort out the generic
pioneer from the Cracker," Ste. Claire says.

His exhibit has about 150 artifacts in it,
ranging from cow whips and battered Stetson hats to a covered wagon. Many of the
artifacts have been kept for generations by decendants of Florida pioneers. For
example, the wagon, built by the John Deere Company about 1900, was loaned to
the museum by Jenny’s Mule Ranch in Samsula.

A replica of a counter in a rural general store,
complete with a lifesized cutout from a photograph of a store owner, is at the
entrance. Other photos of Crackers line the walls. Most of the photos are from
the Florida Archives.

Ste. Claire organized the exhibit with a $35,000
grant from the state Division of Historical Resources. It will be at the Daytona
Beach museum until January 11, when it goes on the road to other cities in the
state.

The museum, 1040 Museum Boulevard, is open 9 a.m.
to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. It is
off Nova Road south of the U.S. 92 intersection. Admission is free on Saturdays.
On other days, admission is $4 for adults and $1 for children and students.

However museum-goers define Cracker when they
walk into the exhibit, Ste. Claire hopes they walk out with an appreciation of
what Crackers actually are.

" There are all these negative connotations.
It’s a complex word," Ste. Claire said. "We’re trying to move away
from all that."

Rick Tonyan is a free-lance writer living in
DeLeon Springs. Most of his work deals with Florida history. His novel, Guns
of the Palmetto Plains, is described as a "Cracker Western." The
novel is available at bookstores.

A GUIDE TO CRACKERESE

Here are words and phrases used by Crackers over
the centuries.

Catchdogs — Cracker cattle-herding dogs
trained to literally "catch" a cow and hold its ear or nose in its
teeth until a cowman arrived.

Chittlins — Cracker version of
chitterlings, or hog innards, cleaned and cooked.

Conchs — Key West Crackers.

Cooter — A freshwater soft-shell turtle
eaten by Crackers.

Corn Pone — A "dressed-up"
hoecake, made from the standard cornmeal, but with milk instead of water used in
the batter. Cone pone differs from cornbread in that the former is fried and the
latter is baked.

Cracklin — Fried hog fat used for food,
sometimes mixed into meal to make cracklin cornbread.

Croker sack — Burlap gunny sack
sometimes used for clothing.

Curlew — Pink spoonbills hunted for food
and for their plumes.

Drag — A rawhide whip used by Crackers
for driving cattle or wagon oxen.

Fatback — Called fatback because this is
exactly where it comes from — off the back of a hog. It was cut in small
squares and put in cooking pots to flavor beans and other vegetables. Sometimes,
it was roasted until it became crunchy and eaten like popcorn for a snack. Lard
was made by boiling the fatback and straining it through fine cloth.

Fetch — To get, as in to
"fetch" some water.

Grits — A principal Cracker staple made
from dried and coarsely ground corn, used in place of potatoes, never as a
cereal. Hominy grits, not to be confused with hominy corn, is a Northern label
for a coarser grain of ground corn.

Hoecake — Primitive bread cake made of
cornmeal, salt and water and cooked in an iron griddle or skillet. It is said
that these cakes were once baked on a hoe held over an open fire.

Low-bush lightning — Cracker term for
moonshine–liquor made and smuggled during Prohibition.

Marshtackie — A small horse with a
narrow chest, prized by cowmen for their smooth ride, durability and quick
maneuverability. Descendants of the horses brought to Florida by the Spanish,
they are adapted to the Florida wilderness.

Pilau — Any dish of meat and rice cooked
together, like a chicken pilau. Pronounced "per-loo" by Crackers.